2010 Dalton Camp Award winners announced

Jun 3, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Montreal - Ethan
Rabidoux of Stratford, Ontario and Rosalyn Yake of Peterborough, Ontario are
the 2010 winners of the Dalton Camp Award, an essay contest sponsored by
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting to honour the memory of the late political
columnist Dalton Camp.

Ethan Rabidoux is a graduate of Political
Studies from Queen's University and Journalism from the University of Western
Ontario. He is a former debt collector, sailor and student leader turned radio
journalist for 1240 CJCS in his hometown.

Rosalyn Yake is a graduate of Ryerson's
Journalism program, and is currently completing a Masters degree in Canadian
and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. She has worked as a researcher and
commentator at CBC radio in Quebec City, and is the founder of Starfish
Scholarships India, a charity based in Toronto.

Ms. Yake's essay, entitled
No News is Bad News, is about the "vacuum where corruption and
mismanagement can easily lurk" in the absence of local and independent
journalism.

Yake recounts the
dirty tricks and intimidation used by a local politician in his March 2006 bid for
re-election to the band council in the northern Manitoba aboriginal reserve of
Norway House where the only media outlet is owned by the band council.

Yake writes that "many
aboriginal communities do not have the tools they need to keep politicians
accountable to the public, or citizens accountable to their democratic
responsibilities. In short, they do
not have the tools they need to make democracy work."

"Rosalyn's essay is a
cautionary tale because local journalism is virtually dead in most Canadian
communities," said Friends' spokesperson Ian Morrison.

Ethan Rabidoux's
essay, on the other hand, is about the contribution of political cartoons to
the enrichment of Canada's democratic heritage and their great potential to
bring the powerful to their knees.

In Street
Gospels: Political Cartoons and Their Role in Canadian Democracy, Rabidoux
notes that the earliest political cartoons of Victorian Canada concerned topics
that are still central to present day debate: Canada/US relations,
federal/provincial relations, French/English relations and corruption.

Rabidoux writes that
Canadians love a blow well struck by a good political cartoon because of our
national allegiance with the underdog.

Friends of Canadian
Broadcasting has presented the Dalton
Camp Award to up to two writers of original essays on the links between
democracy and the media annually since 2003. Each Award consists of a cash prize of $5,000 as well as a
bronze cast medal bearing a likeness of Dalton Camp by the late Canadian
sculptress Dora de Pédèry-Hunt.

The Dalton Camp Award
Selection Committee is chaired by Jim Byrd; the other members are Pauline
Couture and Maggie Siggins.

FRIENDS of Canadian
Broadcasting is an independent, Canada-wide, non-partisan voluntary
organization supported by 100,000 Canadians whose mission is to defend and
enhance the quality and quantity of Canadian programming in Canada's
audio-visual system. FRIENDS is not affiliated with any broadcaster or political
party.